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The lure of someone who appears to have mastered what we’re struggling with seems to be an overwhelming attraction for us. Often, being unaware of the attraction but still feeling its pull adds to our urge to become something more than we are. To this end we find ourselves actively seeking people with those abilities to improve our abilities, our spirituality, our knowledge and our awareness. People who have or are the things we long for are also attracted to us simply through the dynamic of being different from what we are and what they are and seek. This difference creates a natural and irresistible draw for us toward each other. In this way we can know that our inner guidance system is working well and that our lack of what we think and believe we need or want is producing a magnetic pull toward someone whom we believe has what we need or want. This simply follows the Law of Attraction. Since the universe “abhors” a vacuum and is always “seeking” to fill the gap, this attraction enables us an opportunity to fulfill or neutralize what we seek.

This dynamic is all well in good in that it brings to us to what we need to grow, but it also has its pitfalls. Depending on our orientation toward how we believe the world works, it can make us extremely susceptible to being used by others. The question we have to ask ourselves is where do we draw our authority from? Who gives the final judgment on what we feel we are allowed to do or partake in; us or the external world? This difference in approach is explained by psychologists as our dominant locus of control.

To understand this, all we have to do is ask ourselves, “Does the world determine our fate or are we in control of our lives?” In other words, do we seek validation and permission to do and be what we want from the external world and what it values or do we have an internal authority that validates our own beliefs, experiences and choices rather than the world’s?

According to the field of psychology, having an exterior locus of control says that the world determines what our life will be like. Our permissions and life direction comes from what is external to us. Having an interior locus of control says that we will determine how our life will go. Our permissions and life direction comes from an internal authority. At this point you might be asking your selves, “What does this have to do with our susceptibility to being used by others?” The answer is simple. The more externally directed we are, the more easily we can be led by those who are users and opportunists. This makes us eminently more manipulable by those who profess to have or be what we believe that we need. Conversely, if we are internally directed, we will be much less likely to be influenced or manipulated by others since our value system comes from within us. We also need to understand that we may be more externally directed in some issues and more internally directed in others. For example, if we’re involved in work or family ethics we may more defer toward what our family says is appropriate. However, if we’ve been trained in an area of science and have developed proficiencies, our family will have little say in what we believe is right or true because we’ve had our own extensive training independent of our family and now trust our own inner guidance. So we can easily say that some areas of our lives we will believe that others determine our fate and in other areas we do. This leaves us with the understanding that we are a mix of both internal and external authorities. So now we have to ask what is it that makes us more one than the other?

So the next question we have to ask ourselves is has our childhood training allowed us to trust our own judgment and experience? Did our parents encourage us to make our own decisions or were we given a laundry list of rules, expectations and behaviors to live by based on what they thought were “right” and important? Did they tell us what we should be, want and feel or did they leave that determination to us? The more we were encouraged to make our own decisions, the less likely we are to be used by others. The less they encouraged our independence and the more they taught us to look to them for validation and permissions, the more susceptible we become to being used by others. Why? Because now, after we’ve grown up and left home, we will tend to seek an external substitute for our parents. They now become our new “authorities.” Those surrogate parents can take the form of mates, mentors, bosses, gurus, shamans and masters. Herein lays the danger in blindly trusting gurus, shamans and masters.

If we’ve been raised to believe that our parents knew (and still know) what is best for us without our being allowed to develop any independence, we are far more likely to accept at face value what any external authority, gurus & shamans & masters included, tell us is true and right for us. This makes us eminently susceptible to the lies and misdirection by any shyster, user, opportunist, salesman, politician, news reporter, priest, pastor, rabbi, doctor, lawyer, advertiser, and many more people and positions established as board certified, accredited, approved of, sanctioned, and so much more.

So, what is the solution? There is nothing wrong with taking into account our world’s circumstances. However, to have a solid basis for our own truth and values, we must begin with what we feel. We must consider first our own experience. We must develop our own standards for what we believe to be true. For each of us, the only reality there is, is what we perceive. Essentially, all reality is subjective. If we don’t perceive it, it really doesn’t exist for us. The difficulty in knowing this and the challenge for our confidence is that when we do and accept this, we are taking responsibility for our own awareness and choices. For most people, it is easier and harbors less responsibility to let someone else to tell them what they should do and how they should be. Is your fate determined by others or do you make up your own mind? The choice is always yours. It takes courage to be ourselves. Being so is a primary measure for our emotional maturity and spiritual growth. We all must choose.